Teaching methods have been developed over time attempting to improve the learning performance of students. Such methods have taken many forms including providing various incentives to students for academic improvement.
Further forms of teaching aids have been developed, for example, journals, teaching systems and methods, and teaching machines.
Prior to the use of computers, means have been provided for instructions to simultaneously ascertain the responses of a plurality of students having an objective question posed to them. An example of such a teaching means includes an instructor console electrically connected to a plurality of student consoles. Each student console includes a plurality of response buttons. In use, the instructor reads or displays questions to the students, who then push the button corresponding to the correct answer. The instructor's console preferably includes a meter to indicate the percentage of correct responses and a printing device which indicates the individual student's correct and incorrect responses. Such a device, by providing the teacher with student responding information, helps the teacher teach, but it does nothing to help students learn.
Since the advent of computer technology, the use of computer based teaching has been incorporated into learning institutions. Computer based teaching is concerned with the general use of computers and computer lessons to teach all academic subjects in regular teaching environments, utilizing a configuration where each student in the class has his or her own computer and lesson software. This method of teaching is intended to improve the overall teaching performance of all students in any academic subject at any level. The use of computer technology in teaching requires the active participation and support of both the instructors and the students. However, the need to supply each student with his or her own computer and software plus administrative, wiring service, vandalism and teacher training problems create such high costs and administrative difficulties as to render such use of computers in classrooms virtually impossible. Furthermore, there are questions as to whether this type of computer use actually improves--or improves upon--conventional teaching methods.
Several applications to teaching employing electronic teaching aids are known in the art. The inventor herein has, for example, shown in U.S. Pat. 3,497,968 a teaching machine having a central console in which there are connected therewith an instructor's switch and a plurality of student switches. Generally, with such an apparatus, the instructor questions the class and the class members are required to respond within a certain period of time. Subsequent to this period, the instructor actuates a button causing paper in a printing mechanism to advance. Upon release of the button a tone sounds indicating to the students that a response is required.
Further, in Canadian Patent 751,605 there is disclosed a digital computer teaching machine. This device is particularly useful for teaching a student the fundamental steps of computer programming. However, the required configuration is one student-one machine, rendering its use dubious and impossible for general class use because of costs.
In Canadian Patent 1,066,048, an audio-visual teaching machine is disclosed. The device provides an operator's console, an educational information unit, a student performance unit, an audio visual display unit, a student's response registering unit as well as a host of other components. The invention is particularly concerned with the progress of a student based on monitoring his or her biological processes. Here again, the required configuration is one student-one machine which is undesirable.
Further, in Canadian Patent 1,192,394 there is provided a teaching and entertainment device having a speaker assembly, a multisegment CRT, a keyboard and other ancillary equipment. Again, the required configuration is one student-one machine.
Although these devices and methods have some use, they not only all have inherent limitations, but they seldom address the really crucial teaching problems properly, if at all. In most instances, these teaching problems are the result of the constraints imposed by "mass education" in its attempts to make education affordable for all. However, innovations, such as the devices and methods described above come and go, unable to prove any significant benefits.
They fail to address the effect on education of urban blight, population shifts and lack of funding which have resulted in over-crowded classrooms, severe discipline problems and a rising dropout rate. The diversity of student abilities within any one classroom, means that classes must be taught at the pace which suits the slowest students, frustrating and often boring the remainder of the class. Cutting down on the sizes of the classes raises the cost per student. "Tracking", the process of separating students by general ability and putting those of one general ability in its own classroom, is socially repugnant to those who may be thus stigmatized as "slow" or "poor" learners. Student and parent resentment has caused there to be less and less recourse to tracking--and so the problem persists.
These devices and methods have failed to address the fact that it has been well established that students are endowed with different amounts and kinds of intelligence. But no one has yet devised a method for measuring the optimal learning potential of an individual student for a particular subject except in terms of comparing the performances of two or more students who are given the same task--hardly a valid method for determining what an individual student is really capable of learning given the most efficient teaching and learning techniques and materials.
These devices and methods have failed to properly address the fact that too many students either do not wish to learn or cannot and the competition for the students' time from recreational and entertainment activities is increasing. Students spend an inordinate amount of time watching entertainment TV and drugs, alcohol and teen-pregnancies exacerbate the general situation.
These devices and methods do not help teachers to successfully compete for their students' time and interests with entertainment TV and such. These provide students with a high degree of pleasure motivation, the powerful combination of learning and game feedback and often embellished with bells and whistles, music, noise, flashing lights and the usual commercial hoopla. As a result, many students do not do their homework or do it badly and come to school ill-prepared to take the lessons, forcing teachers to regurgitate the subject matter of the homework, wasting valuable teaching time.
They have failed to properly address the needs of students who fall into the extremes, the very poor and the very bright students. Except for students with learning disabilities and the Special Ed classes for their particular needs, conventional systems are forced to ignore them and concentrate their resources on the "average" student. These devices and methods have no answer for the majority of students who, for whatever reasons, wish to learn but cannot, if not with respect to all subjects, then with respect to specific subjects. Even the basic skills are suffering; reading and arithmetic scores remain low or are getting lower and the general reading problem continues to worsen.
These devices and methods do not address the extremely critical problem which results from the fact that 100% teacher interaction with ALL students in a classroom is presently impossible. Traditionally, teachers either lecture or address questions to the entire class or to individual students. In either case, only one student is necessarily interacting with the teacher (is induced to concentrate) since only one student is required to respond. The remainder of the class are interacting only partially, or not at all if they are daydreaming. And if teachers simply lecture, the amount of class interaction and consequent concentration is problematical and likely to be low. Yet, teachers require 100% interaction from all their students to be able to teach them all effectively.
Part of the same problem is the difficulty teachers have initiating the learning process for all their students because of the lack of 100% interaction. They are unable to effectively employ questions for that purpose. Without the initial interaction (and induced concentration) of every student, teachers cannot properly initiate the learning cycle (motivation, leading to concentration, leading to learning, leading to motivation) for every student in the class, losing for some or all students the ability to experience the pleasure motivation of the initial learning that starts the learning cycle and perpetuates it. And this failure affects most adversely those students who are slow learners.
And these devices and methods have consistently failed to address a related major teaching problem, the fact that teachers have absolutely no way to introduce game-pleasure motivation, possibly the strongest type of motivation of all. Which is to be deplored since other attempts by teachers to motivate their students are too often unsuccessful, counter-productive or impossible. There is no argument that teachers can use that will convince students that essential but tedious rote-drills are fun.
The inability to initiate or to perpetuate the learning cycle for all students for long enough to complete essential learning tasks, leaves teachers wide open to serious discipline problems. Students who cannot learn become bored, are prone to mischief and disrupt the teaching and the ability of other students to learn, encouraging dropout tendencies.
These devices and methods fail to address the problems of student cheating or of the "cramming syndrome" where virtually all studying is done by students just prior to tests and examinations--and quickly forgotten for lack of reinforcement. Such test and examinations are not even a valid indication of student ability because of the stress and memory blocks engendered in their taking. Moreover, such testing is counter-productive with respect to valid learning. Teachers cannot provide learning feedback instantaneously following student responses resulting in both correct and incorrect responses being reinforced. To supply the feedback would provide valid learning but teachers would have to sacrifice valid marks; students would simply change their incorrect answers.
These devices and methods do not address the problem of wasted teaching time. The current daily process of asking questions and waiting for responses and re-asking the same questions when responses are incorrect, becomes a slow and tedious one forcing many teachers to virtually "fly" through the last part of the course without being able to give adequate attention to the quantity or quality of student learning.
History teachers may barely cover the factual information requirements of the course and will have practically no time for discussions that would enable their students to understand the significance of the information. And it is the same for all teachers and all subjects. Time is the bane of teaching; there is never enough but conventional teaching has a built-in waste factor that teachers have difficulty controlling and innovations up to now have consistently failed to consider.
They have totally failed to address the problem of the absentee teacher. It is a constant annoyance and problem, particularly when the absenteeism is unexpected, which is often the case. The absentee must be replaced by a substitute teacher who in most cases becomes little more than a monitor. A substitute teacher lesson is more often than not, a lost lesson.
Nor do these devices and methods address the fact that teachers have no way of properly encouraging a class discussion nor of resolving the issues. With conventional class discussions, most students are discouraged from participating. Too often they are monopolized by a few bright students or they become dialogues between one or two students and the teacher. Nor do teachers have any way to resolve issues properly since no quick efficient secret-ballot voting technique is available to them, only an "intimidating" show of hands.
Nor do they properly address the problem of cooperative small group learning. Teachers have no means for guaranteeing that group members on their own will be able to properly control their discussions or other learning activities.
Nor do these devices and methods properly address a major defect of conventional teaching which is the virtual total lack of teaching feedback that is required to enable teachers to constantly assess the effectiveness of their efforts. The inability on the part of teachers to determine if the class properly understood an explanation of a particular concept may lead them to continue on to a next dependent concept and possibly with disastrous results. This teaching failure is probably the most significant single cause of student dropouts.
Additionally, they do not address the fact that teachers have no valid way, on a day-by-day basis, of timely assessing whether individual students are developing dropout tendencies or their classes generally are making progress or remaining static or dropping behind.
Finally, these devices and methods are completely unable to address the most difficult educational problem of all to resolve, the problem of incompetent teachers. What proportion of teachers fall into this category will never be known since real teaching accountability is virtually impossible given all the variables. The occasional classroom visits by assistant principals and examination results may identify the worst cases but poor teaching remains endemic and the major factor that adversely affects the ability of students to learn.
In short, none of the devices and methods developed to date have addressed the problems described above. Or if they have, obviously not very successfully. Certainly, the prevalence of austerity budgets throughout the nation attests to the thinking of the general public with respect to the general education situation on the elementary and secondary school levels. The voting of minimal local funding sends a clear message. Taxpayers are unwilling to throw money at what they perceive to be a failing system.